Monday, November 7, 2016

13th International Tongue Twister Day

Today is a day to celebrate tongue twisters! What fun! The children at school love to hear them and try themselves to say them as quickly as possible. These phrases or sentences with alliteration or a sequence of similar sounds beg to be repeated as quickly as possible without stumbling.

There are many lists of them on the internet and they appear in children's anthologies and joke books. One Kindergarten class teacher loves to do 'She sells seashells by the seashore' with her class and this year her class have really got involved by following its recitation with finding out about its origin. They learned that the 'she' refers to Mary Anning, the great fossil collector who made a living for her destitute family by selling trilobite shells on Lyme Regis beach. Much has been written about her and now there are at least three picture book biographies about her life. These are: (from my blog on 8th March) • Stone Girl Bone Girl by Laurence Anholt tells the story of Mary Fanning who as a ten year old child found a fossilised sea monster which was a major prehistoric discovery at the time. • The Fossil Girlby Catherine Brighton
• Mary Anning by Kay Barnham.On line here you can see this book about Mary Anning and the tongue twister. This includes information about Mary as well as a revamped version of the original song.

Whatever tongue twisters you choose to share you and the students are sure to have fun. Perhaps you can find out if Peter Piper and Betty Botter were real people too.

1 comment:

I love this idea of a tongue twister day. I recently tried to find some more tongue twister books for our library. I did find this one https://www.bookdepository.com/The-Amazing-Animal-Alphabet-of-Twenty-Six-Tongue-Twisters-Robert-Pizzo/9780764966224I didn't realise Mary Anning was the subject of She sells sea shells. Thanks for this post.

About Me

I'm a teacher/librarian in an early childhood school library. The library caters for 3-8 year old children, their teachers and their parents.
My aim here is to showcase at least one book each day until there is ' a year in a Prep School Library'. Usually the date will be the birthday of someone who is connected with Children's Literature.
I have met my initial challenge to write about a book every day, so now I write much more intermittently when I have learned of a new birthday, special day, have had a wonderful teaching moment or have found a great new book.